Roger Goodell wasn’t about to risk the equivalent of the release of a second Ray Rice elevator video or a chilling wife-beating confession by Josh Brown being uncovered months after he handed out his punishment to Ezekiel Elliott.
He took Elliott down for a startling six-game suspension Friday, which he can first appeal to the NFL — the most I think he can hope for is a conditional reduction to four games — and then likely file a preliminary injunction, which if granted can put the suspension on hold as it drags through the court system.
If Elliott indeed did all that was alleged in three incidents detailed in the NFL’s letter to Elliott, which was obtained by the Daily News, then Goodell’s punishment was right on the money. If Elliott is prone to being physical with women, he needs help and a two-game suspension wouldn’t register.
But why did it take 13 months to investigate? Why is it coming out now, just four weeks before the Cowboys open the season against the Giants?
The commissioner is back to being the tough guy law-and-order sheriff who turned the NFL upside down when he got the job in 2006 and soon was sending Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson, Chris Henry, Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress and Ben Roethlisberger and others into storage for regrettable acts of stupidity.
Goodell lost his way with Rice when he initially gave him only a two-game suspension in 2014 despite the initial video showing him dragging his now-wife Janay out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator. Goodell was blasted for going soft and apologized, but soon was in the most hot water of his career when the second elevator tape went viral and showed Rice punching Janay. Goodell immediately suspended Rice indefinitely and although that was overturned for double jeopardy three months later, it ended Rice’s career.
The pressure on Goodell at the time was enormous. There was even talk he was going to get fired from his $40 million a year job for botching the Rice case.
Goodell also whiffed on Brown last year, giving him just a one-game suspension even though the NFL knew he had been arrested in 2015 for domestic violence and knew he later tried to barge into his estranged wife’s room at the Pro Bowl.
The Giants brought Brown back after the arrest and then signed him to a new two-year contract with a raise four months after the Pro Bowl incident, when Molly Brown called league and hotel security and was moved to another room. Only after a second set of documents that included the Pro Bowl details and other information was made public in October last year did the Giants finally cut Brown and the league place him on the commissioner’s exempt list, where he still resides.
“I have abused my wife,” Brown wrote in a journal.
Just last week, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was still insisting that he did not expect Elliott to be suspended. Goodell’s six-game penalty is the baseline he uses for domestic violence cases. Although Elliott was not charged by the district attorney in Columbus, that did not preclude Goodell from taking action. In the NFL’s letter to Elliott, it outlines three separate days from July of 2016 in which he “used force that caused injuries,” to Tiffany Thompson and she supplied pictures to prove it that the league was able to determine were taken on the dates in question.
One source thought the punishment was excessive. “This is the league lashing out because they haven’t had a domestic violence incident to show how tough they are for over a year. They were under tremendous pressure to come down hard on somebody,” the source said.
Goodell gave Elliott what is now considered the standard punishment after the Rice case — that makes the Brown case even more baffling — which does give him the flexibility to walk it back if Elliott makes a compelling case for leniency in his appeals hearing. My feeling is he will reduce it to four games contingent on Elliott not getting into further trouble and following the guidelines for counseling.
After getting it wrong on Rice and Brown, but keeping Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson off the field as long as possible for their domestic violence issues, Goodell is trying to send a message to a 22-year old kid in Elliott who has a hard time staying out of trouble and understanding that just because he runs for 100 yards a game doesn’t make him bulletproof.
This may be a “he said, she said,” case with Elliott, and it allegedly happened just about two months after the Cowboys made him the fourth overall pick in the 2016 draft. What was he thinking? For how long can you blame immaturity?
Although it turns out Thompson lied about an incident by saying Elliott pulled her out of her car, the NFL says the DA found the rest of her story believable, but they still didn’t press charges. The NFL says Elliott’s side only presented theories about how Thompson sustained the injuries but not facts.
The NFL rounded up the evidence and went all-in on Elliott.
Goodell was not taking the chance of another video showing up.
